"It symbolizes the Jeri that we knew before is no longer there anymore," Carrie-Anne Moss, who brings the powerful lawyer to life on Netflix's Marvel Show, told INSIDER. "That completely empowered, that 'nothing can touch me,' 'don't mess with me,' 'don't come near me' Jeri starts to crumble right then. She still has all of that, but you start to see underneath who she is."

That exact moment occurs shortly after Jeri is diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as ALS. While driving, she's distracted by her own thoughts and pulls over to the side of the road. She ends up picking up a sex worker and taking her back to her apartment.

No actual sex is shown on-screen, but the next time Jeri is seen, she's with three sex workers in her apartment, snorting cocaine, drinking, and doing a strip tease.

"She really puts down her guard in that scene because she's high and wasted and dealing with her pain," Moss said. "That was a pivotal scene for Jeri's journey to hit that bottom like that."

Jeri lets loose in her apartment. Netflix

Moss said the scene was a "fun" one to shoot because of the different layers involved.

"We don't really often get to see a scene like that where a woman is at the center of it so I thought that was pretty cool," she said.

In that scene, Jeri is letting loose, but she's also struggling with a diagnosis she cannot control. Because Jeri received an early diagnosis, Moss said she focused on her character's emotional turmoil rather than symptoms.

"I did a lot of research and looked at the reality of that disease and then it was important to Melissa [Rosenberg, the show's creator] that I not play the symptoms of it too much because ... it hasn't started to manifest in that way," she said. "So really what I explored was more of the devastation inside and the fear to have that kind of diagnosis."

Jeri wants to be control of her own life. David Giesbrecht/Netflix

"Jessica Jones" is a series full of complicated characters whose vulnerabilities are explored in various avenues.

"I think it's always incredible to be a part of something that is speaking to the culture, that's speaking to what's going on in the world on many different levels and many different facets," Moss said. "I'm grateful to be part of that."

"Jessica Jones" season two is now on Netflix.

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